Brooklyn Community College to Offer Courses in Urban Farming

Kingsborough Community College will be starting an on-campus small-scale farm this spring, offering elective courses under the rubric “Urban Farming.” Said Professor Stuart Schulman, who’s in charge of the program, to the Brooklyn Paper: “We want to show students the whole farming process, from the planting, growing and harvesting.” Woot! The program is being funded by California’s DeLoach Vineyards (through Kingsborough teacher and wine photog Sara Matthews).

Sure, this is yet another example of a Brooklyn school relying on Californian foodie philanthropy to fund a farming program, but hell, you take what you can get—and maybe local government will eventually see the value in these kinds of hands-on programs.

And they are really valuable: Insofar as I think America is in desperate need of a food cultural revolution, the only way I can see that happening is for more and more people to (re)gain a pragmatic understanding about where food comes from (and where it shouldn’t come from). Call me a fucking hippie if you want, or make straw man “economic” arguments (large-scale farming is actually less efficient than small- to medium-scale) but food is destiny, and we need to reshape ours.